Additionally, we have also restricted character creation and transfers to the Grobbulus realm.

To be honest, layering never really bothered me much in the first place. I've gone back and forth on this a few times, but I never noticed much difference in the economy either way, which I'm sure there was, but I couldn't be assed to care one way or the other. The biggest impact I saw when layering was shut off was that Ironforge came to life after the server went flat. That was the most enjoyable aspect to me.

These queues suck. People missing raids, people forgetting to log in a few hours in advance, people not being able to make it home until just before invite times getting queued out... I just want these queues gone. And this server is home, I'm not leaving it and I don't want anybody else from the server core to leave either. If this lets the core of my server remain here while we have this temporary influx of pandemic tourists flood the server then so be it. I'm pretty happy with this outcome.

Also: I just noticed these servers have been locked for new players. This is interesting. It'll definitely move new players to the smaller servers.

One of my buddies who played with me back in the day was also forced to work from home last month with the rest of us. He wanted to play Classic on launch but just didn't have the time to sink into it. He signed up and hopped onto my server and I've been able to play Classic with him for the past several weeks and it's been fun. Good thing he got in before the lock. I got another buddy who I used to play with back in the day who I know is also stuck at home right now, and I wanted to get him onto Fairbanks with me so I could get the crew back together. That's off the table now.

Edit: They also restricted character creation on Grobbulus? Does this mean if you are already on Grobbulus, you can no longer make an alt?

I got so lost in prepping to raid lead for our first ZG run on wednesday that I forgot to log in extra early. I remembered to get in an hour before raid and was stuck in queue for two and a half hours. Luckily ZG is an easy raid, so our other tank solo-tanked all the trash and I was able to get in right before we got to the bosses. Last night we called off our BWL raid because a significant chunk of our guys were stuck in queues. We probably could have pulled people from the bench and filled, but it didn't feel right leaving our guys behind and making them PUG or miss a lockout so we pushed that raid out until Sunday. These queues sucked.

I play on Sulfuras and haven't experienced a single queue. Am I missing something?

I don't know how that's possible. Wednesday evening for the ZG release there were 1-2 hour queues during primetime on Sulfuras, and yesterday was somehow even worse.

Today we had 30 min queues at 6:30PM EST and then the queues instantly disappeared at 7PM EST when they enabled layering.

From my standpoint, it's about time. The queues were ruining my guild's ability to start raids on time. An acceptable short term solution to allow us to actually play the game until populations stabilize.

I'd personally take layering over the 2-3 hour long queues that people have been suffering from. Layering isn't perfect but it's also not some awful idea that totally breaks everything despite what the multitude of threads from angry toxic WoW forum spammers say. Getting people into the game is most important and we are in totally unique circumstances right now with the pandemic, so I'm glad they went this direction.

The locked servers are also a good thing in most situations imo. It's obvious that these locked servers are vastly overpopulated and this will stem the flow of people and hopefully push new people to the lower populated servers. Only crappy part is new people wanting to join friends who are already established on locked servers.

I still wish Blizzard launched with a much lower player cap for Classic to more closely emulate the vanilla caps, but I also understand why they have them as high as they do (better servers now a days, less servers needed overall, players perceptions of "high populations" is skewed by heavily overpopulated private servers etc). Not a big deal for me anyway as I'm on one of the medium/high servers.

I play on Sulfuras and haven't experienced a single queue. Am I missing something?

I don't know how that's possible. Wednesday evening for the ZG release there were 1-2 hour queues during primetime on Sulfuras, and yesterday was somehow even worse.

Today we had 30 min queues at 6:30PM EST and then the queues instantly disappeared at 7PM EST when they enabled layering.

From my standpoint, it's about time. The queues were ruining my guild's ability to start raids on time. An acceptable short term solution to allow us to actually play the game until populations stabilize.

That is weird because I log at least everyday and don't experience it.

That is weird because I log at least everyday and don't experience it.

The queues weren't at all times of day, they were on weeknight evenings when everyone was logging in after work & dinner to raid. If you logged on in the mornings or afternoons it's unlikely you ever saw any queues. If you logged on at 7PM server time or later on a weeknight you would definitely have seen a massive queue. I had several guild members who skipped raiding last week due to those queues, and it seems Blizzard agreed that the situation was untenable since Sulfuras is now a locked realm with layering enabled.

That is weird because I log at least everyday and don't experience it.

The queues weren't at all times of day, they were on weeknight evenings when everyone was logging in after work & dinner to raid. If you logged on in the mornings or afternoons it's unlikely you ever saw any queues. If you logged on at 7PM server time or later on a weeknight you would definitely have seen a massive queue. I had several guild members who skipped raiding last week due to those queues, and it seems Blizzard agreed that the situation was untenable since Sulfuras is now a locked realm with layering enabled.